Leiber and Stoller Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

The song Only In America

Mann and Weil

An old blogger buddy included the song Only In America in his K-Chuck Radio post, Just wipe the vocals off, and we’ll take care of things.

One example of his: the backing tracks of California Dreamin’ by Barry McGuire and by The Mamas and The Papas are virtually identical. I had heard the McGuire version some years ago.

The Only In America story is somewhat more complicated. The great Brill Building songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil initially wrote the piece. As Songfacts noted:

“The song was written at a time before integration, and the lyrics were originally about racism. It had the following chorus:

Only in America, land of opportunity
Can they save a seat in the back of the bus just for me

Only in America, where they preach the Golden Rule
Will they start to march when my kids go to school”

To the best of my knowledge from the different tellings, this version was never recorded.

New lyrics

“The [new, additional] songwriters [producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller] changed [the lyrics] to be a satiric message of patriotism. The Drifters recorded the song with these new ‘patriotic’ lyrics but refused to release it because they did not believe that message.”

Only in America Can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire

Only in America Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President

A 2008 article in the Long Beach Post offers a different explanation for why the Drifters didn’t release the tamer version.

“The song, with its gentle Latin rolling beat and percussion thump, could have been the next chart hit for the Drifters if Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler hadn’t pulled the recording. Wexler said that, in the light of race relations of that time, it would be unfeeling, unfair, and unfitting to have a black group release a song about America being the land of opportunity and suggest that an African-American could become its president.”

The song was recorded a few months later by Jay and the Americans, who Leiber and Stoller produced. It became a moderate hit, reaching #25 pop on the Billboard charts. I remember the Americans’ version then, and as a kid, I found it not credible.

In any case, The Drifters’ version appeared for the first time in the 1972 UK LP “Saturday Night At The Club.” The cut was conducted by Garry Sherman and recorded on April 12, 1963.

Lead singer

I’ve read in several sources that Rudy Lewis was the lead singer on The Drifters’ version. One of the YouTube videos of Only In America lists the group at the session as Billy Davis, Charlie Thomas, Eugene Pearson, Johnny Terry, and Lewis.

Marv Goldberg’s Later Drifters notes: “At their April 12 [1963] session, they recorded Only In America (led by Rudy), Rat Race (Rudy) [#71 pop], If You Don’t Come Back (Johnny Moore), and I’ll Take You Home (Johnny Moore).”

From a 2016 From The Vaults post: “Lewis is probably the most underrated of all the Drifters’ lead singers. He had the bad fortune to come in after Ben E. King redefined the group’s sound and never got the recognition that King did.” And King had had a series of solo hits.

Nevertheless, Lewis, who sang with the legendary gospel arranger Clara Ward, was the primary lead from 1961 to 1963 and had hits such as Some Kind Of Wonderful (#6 RB, #32 pop in 1961), Up On The Roof (#4 RB, #5 pop in 1963) and On Broadway (#7 RB, #9 pop in 1963). He died in 1964, at least in part from drug use, an early member of the 27 Club. He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Here’s Jay & the Americans with Charlie Thomas’ Drifters performing Only in America live, obviously many years later.

Music Throwback Saturday: On Broadway

A young Phil Spector played the distinctive lead guitar solo on The Drifters’ recording.

I’ve been involved with an office JEOPARDY! game. A recent clue: “A hundred shouting signs shed down their bright fantastic glow” in Claude McKay’s “On” this NYC street. No idea, but because of a question I’d missed earlier, I take a guess, and it’s correct.

Here’s On Broadway by Claude McKay, a rather melancholy piece:
Upon the merry crowd and lines
Of moving carriages below.
Oh wonderful is Broadway — only
My heart, my heart is lonely.

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica on September 15, 1889, and became an early key figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

I wonder if the poem inspired a song a few decades later:

New York City-based composers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote On Broadway “originally recorded by the Cookies (although the Crystals’ version beat them to release)”…

“Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller liked the song but felt that it was not quite right [for the Drifters] and the four held an overnight brainstorming session which culminated in the better-known version of the song, now with a rock-oriented groove and with a more bluesy feel… A young Phil Spector played the distinctive lead guitar solo on The Drifters’ recording.”

LISTEN to On Broadway

The Cookies

The Crystals

The Drifters, #9 pop, #7 soul in 1963

Dave Clark Five

The Chipettes

Bobby Darin

Percy Faith Orchestra

Neil Young

George Benson, #7 pop, #2 soul

“George Benson’s version… from his 1978 album Weekend in L.A…. won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance. The song appeared in the films Big Business and American Beauty, and… was used in the 1979 film All That Jazz in a sequence that featured dancers on stage auditioning for a musical similar to Chicago. George Benson also performed “On Broadway” with Clifford and the Rhythm Rats for the 1994 Muppet album Kermit Unpigged.”

August Rambling

GayProf noted Perry when he wrote: “Numerous songs en vogue right now celebrate women consuming alcohol to the point of blacking out, hooking up, or hurling (not always in that order). ”

Because I was out of town, I managed to miss a couple of significant cultural anniversaries. One was the 50th anniversary of the first real Marvel superhero comic, the Fantastic Four, by Stan Lee and Jack “King” Kirby. Mark Evanier explains why it had a November cover date. Check out this hour-long Kirby documentary. And here’s a link to the intro to the FF TV show.

The other was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lucille Ball. I watched most, if not all, of the episodes of every single one of her ongoing series, from the seminal I Love Lucy (1951-1957; 8.9 out of 10 on the IMDB scale), which started before even TV Guide and I were born but lives through the clever concept known as the rerun; to the star-studded (and too long, in my recollection) episodes of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-1960; 8.6); to The Lucy Show (1962–1968; 7.3), which was the one with Lucy as Lucy Carmichael, Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz in the earlier shows) as Viv, and Gale Gordon as Lucy’s testy boss, Mr. Mooney.

Then there was Here’s Lucy (1968–1974, 6.8), where “Lucy Carter, a widow with two teen children [played her real kids with Desi Arnaz, Lucie and Desi Jr.] takes a job as a secretary for her stuffy brother-in-law [Gale Gordon, again.] Finally, there was Life with Lucy (1986; 6.0) “Lucy Barker, now a grandmother living with her daughter’s family” Gale Gordon also appeared in this show.

They declined in quality somewhat – Life with Lucy was particularly bad, as I recall – but if I didn’t quite LOVE Lucy, I liked the woman from upstate New York (Jamestown) quite a bit.

I believe this was Lucy’s favorite scene from her first series.

As you may have noticed, Katy Perry becomes the second artist, following Michael Jackson, to send five songs from an album to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and during his birth month, no less. An accomplishment to be sure, though the charts don’t reflect the same level of sales they used to. (Similarly true of top-rated TV shows: the numbers are far less than they used to be.) Not incidentally, GayProf noted Perry when he wrote: “Numerous songs en vogue right now celebrate women consuming alcohol to the point of blacking out, hooking up, or hurling (not always in that order). “

In pictures of models, “there are women (and occasionally men) contorted into positions that, were you to see actual people in them, you’d find curious or peculiar or perhaps even alarming.”

Natalie Cole with the Allman Brothers. Check out the sidebar for David Crosby, Graham Nash, and others.

On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data could reproduce the voices of humans with perfect fidelity. Brent Spiner can do the same with the voice of Patrick Stewart.

My new Kickstarter fave: Stripped is a documentary love letter to cartoonists and comic writers who’ve delighted newspaper readers for decades. Since 2008, 166 newspapers have shut down, leaving the future uncertain for many syndicated cartoonists. Amidst this industry upheaval, Stripped follows 60 cartoonists, including luminaries like Jim Davis, Scott McCloud, and Jeff Keane, as they navigate the uncharted waters of a new digital world.

Having seen the trailer for the Spider-Man movie reboot, I have no reason to actually see the movie. The first two movies with Tobey Maguire were great; even own them on DVD.
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Two music legends died this month. Jerry Leiber of the songwriting duo Leiber & Stoller wrote more songs than just about any pop composer. Here’s a list of most of them. Listen to Big Mama Thornton singing “Hound Dog”, some four years before Elvis Presley. Also, hear Charlie Brown by the Coasters; coincidentally, Carl Gardner, leader of the Coasters, died a couple of months ago.

Nickolas Ashford, who died August 22, was the songwriting partner and husband of Valerie Simpson. Ashford & Simpson wrote songs for Motown artists, Aretha Franklin, and others, as well as performing themselves. Hear Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell do You’re All I Need To Get By. Also, here’s a song originally performed by Ray Charles, I Don’t Need No Doctor (live) by Humble Pie.

The Jerry Leiber Cover Story on Coverville.

The Salon story about Leiber and Ashford.

GOOGLE ALERTS

Roger with the hula hoop

Rollie Roger Green T-Shirt

Roger Green, the proprietor of Hair by Roger, said noise and vibrations from the work were spoiling the salon’s ‘peaceful environment’. A spokesperson from United Utilities said: “We are fully aware of the impact this scheme has had on the community…”

“The Black Boardwalk Cat is a distinctive animal that has acquired an unusual place in the hearts of many university employees and students,” said Roger Green, associate professor of political science and public administration.

Forgotten Book: THE THROTTLEPENNY MURDER, Roger J. Green. My contribution this week to Pattinase’s Friday’s Forgotten Books is a book I read in 1993.

“Former Wisbech Mayor and Wisbech Standard editor, Roger Green who died in a road traffic collision on the A47 Wisbech bypass…. This particular Roger Green got a LOT of coverage.